Oxygenee At The Virtual Absinthe Museum, PontarlierMember Since April 2009Artist Statement Absinthe...the Green Fairy...La Fée Verte....no other drink has the same romantic history - the French Impressionists....Toulouse Lautrec, Degas, Manet, Van Gogh....Paris in the Belle Epoque....the cafes of Montmartre....the muse of writers from Verlaine and Rimbaud to Joyce and Hemingway. Of course, there's a darker side to absinthe as well - no other drink has ever roused the same degree of passionate ondemnation, and no other drink has ever been banned outright in the way absinthe was in the years leading up to 1915.

All that remains today of this fabled era are the ghosts of the Green Fairy...absinthe antiques and absinthiana....slotted spoons for holding the sugar cube, dose-marked glasses, advertising carafes, matchstrikers or pyrogenes for the grande marques, absinthe advertising posters, manufacturers catalogues and postcards....echos of La Heure Verte a century ago.

Your guide to the lost world of absinthe and La Fée Verte is Oxygénée, a passionate absintheur and artémisophile. Oxygénée takes his online name from the smiling bon vivant, seen in Tamagno's famous poster enjoying a glass of Cusenier's Absinthe Oxygénée - one of thegreatest brands of the era. When he's not busy updating this site - new items are added to the Virtual Museum every month - or scouring rural France for forgotten bottles of pre-ban absinthe, and distilling the acclaimed Roquette and Mystique absinthes in Pontarlier, Oxygénée runs Oxygenee Ltd, a UK based company specializing in absinthe, and rare and ancient spirits.